Serve me | Bring me water | when I need water | and I need water | Bring me my shoe | in your mouth | keep your hands free | for balance | for the work | Headwinds | have a use for you | in crosswinds | form an echelon | with my other servants | hear their talk of “claims” and “triumphs” | for some Brahms, for others techno, or economics | will you listen | so hard to them? | Bring me water | Be serious, dour | lack imagination, that’s fine, that’s an advantage | narrow and narrow yourself | you’re not beautiful, beauty is | irrelevant to you | beauty, acclaim, glory | are mere distractions for you | all the vapid bric-a-brac | of concepts and debate, dissent and premise | all the tinkling academia of steeples and liberty, telos and penury | irrelevant to you | for you have work | and in the work you are greater | than anyone | in work you are allowed | to be no one | serve me | Bring me my book | at night, before I sleep, talk to me of your claims, your triumphs | tell me | the tittle-tattle and the news | of the latest | peaks and breakthroughs | to me, it will do | for a lullaby | you are so boring | good | just do as you’re told | and don’t deviate | don’t care | and if you hear | the sound of sleigh-bells in the snow | that sweetly crystallising music | let it go | curiosity is a flaw | in the perfect drone | you understand | you have no right | to the witty remarks, or the superbly turned | tale | you realise | the nature of such | a fundamental mistake | you have no race | to lose or even, in the end, to run | you know | you cannot ever use or be | the first person